Monday, September 30, 2013

You may think that this poem's on the deficit,
So kindly allow me to preface it
That the shutdown impending
Is not about spending;
There's no one who even professes it.

It's a high-stakes political drama,

Unneeded if heads had been calmer,

A tactical ruse

By those who refuse

Affordable Care from Obama.

The Tea Party Capitol faction

Appears to take no satisfaction,

Though we're not in the black

In the age of Barack,

That the deficit's cut to a fraction.

The foregoing limerick is just a reminder that, as the US federal government heads toward a shutdown over the parties' inability to agree on a budget, that the budget itself is not the issue; neither are debts and the deficit. Although the fact is not well publicized, and has more often been deliberately obscured, the federal budget deficit has been cut in half since President Obama took office in 2009.

The the intractability of the fight over the budget is therefore a strategy by the House Republicans, and especially their Tea Party faction, to throw yet another attempted roadblock in front of the rollout of Obamacare.

No public appealFor an IPO deal -But did Congress know better? You bet it did!

No more need for advisors advisin' it,

To prevent any legal surprise in it;

Just poke ev'ry friend

For cash they can send

To your shack with a couple of guys in it.

As the Wall Street Journal put it: Bring on the fundraising billboards! Yesterday new rules under the JOBS Act went into effect, lifting the longstanding ban on general solicitation of private investments. For the last 80 years, for an IPO or other securities offering to get exemption from SEC registration requirements necessitated compliance with Regulation D. Under Reg D, a company or fund looking for investors had to avoid any "general solicitation" and ensure that every investor was "accredited;" essentially, wealthy and sophisticated.

Under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, however, investments can be solicited as generally as you want - through blogs, tweets, TV, radio, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, you name it. Such openness puts the onus on entrepreneurs to take "reasonable steps" to ensure that angel investors are also accredited investors, and puts a higher burden of trust and due diligence on investors, who must be sure that they can place not only their money, but also their private financial data in the hands of up & coming impresarios.

The Wall Street Journal reports that, now that Larry Summers has officially removed himself from consideration for the Fed Chairman's post, current Vice Chair Janet Yellen is the front-runner. This is somewhat surprising in that President Obama and his White House team were said to be very upset at the public resistance to Prof. Summers, their preferred choice, and might have resented the liberal pressure to go with Dr. Yellen instead. The reaction of the markets shows that traders expected a quicker tapering of quantitative easing from him than her, though a close reading of their relevant remarks does not offer clear confirmation of such a distinction.

What is clear is that Dr. Yellen's career offers a wealth of reassuring experience to indicate a likelihood of consistent leadership on issues of not just monetary policy, but also financial sector regulation, which the country very much needs.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

To punish the leaders of Syria,They discussed what was planned,And whether we standOn a footing that's clearly superior.

It's an issue remarkably graveOf lives we may take or may save,And the president's foeMay not "just say no,"Though to do so they certainly crave.

In the midst of this deliberation

Came a man from the econ vocationWho said: "I have checkedIts likely effectOn oil, FX and inflation."

Though no-one may doubt the veracity

Of remarks in an econ capacity,

At the juncture we faced

They're seen in bad taste,

As is gen'rally understood tacitly.

As Congress and the nation debate the morality, strategy and efficacy of punitive attacks on the Syrian military, economic issues take a back seat. Even the most stridently partisan voices on such issues as fiscal and monetary stimulus or the debt ceiling are muted this week, as those whose forte is defense and foreign policy take center stage.

One welcome result is that boundaries of Capitol partisanship are at least temporarily redrawn, as Republican leaders such as Senators McCain and Graham side with President Obama (as does the Democratic leadership), while leftists and Tea Partiers may be thrown together in opposition. Is it too much to hope that, when the Debt Ceiling deadline comes up again in October, the partisans will have less appetite for the usual theatrics?

Sunday, September 1, 2013

To predict and construe
And hypothesize, too,
In a rational, testable way.

Economists have their devices

To model employment and prices

And cloak their decrees in

The mantle of reason;

The question is: if that suffices.

The label of "science" may serve

To misname economists' oeuvre,

When considering deeply

Their failure to keep the

Investors ahead of the curve.

It's been said that the econ profession

Made an unscientific impression

When the models they picked

Could rarely predict

How soon we will have a recession.

An incontrovertible fact is

That theory may falter in practice

When we try to project

And falsely expect

That people are rational actors.

If we try not to place our reliance

That with logic man stays in compliance,

It might be allowed

By the PhD crowd:

Economics, though dismal, is science.

Greetings to all those making the trek back to college or graduate school this weekend, as I am with our college sophomore today (go Greyhounds!). Here is a special shout-out to those of you returning to study the Dismal Science, which has recently come under attack in a New York Times opinion piece for a surplus of the former and a surfeit of the latter. Though highly regarded economists arose in honorable and forthright defense of the profession, it seemed as though the gates had been opened for Wall Street skeptics to voice long-held doubts.

Take heart, students, and be not troubled by such thoughts. Remember though, that while the science of economics may labor to measure and model how prices and employment have done and will do, the philosophy of economics may not shrink from the debate over what they should do. While studying social science, consider toward what sort of society you are working, and remember that all of those economic actors are people.

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Dr. Goose earned a PhD in economics from the Universities of Western Ontario and North Carolina (he migrated every spring and fall). Known for bringing the Dismal Science a little more down, Dr. Goose first made his mark with a research paper entitled "Migrant Labor: Fair or Fowl?" With interests that range from Washington to Wall Street and beyond, Dr. Goose has made it his mission to promote economic awareness through limericks.

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Economic Humor in Poetry

Issues & news of the day, from the worlds of economics, politics and finance, distilled into five-line jewels of satirical, anapestic clarity (i.e., limericks) by the winged, web-footed economist Dr. Goose.